STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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TORCH T2 BIKE HELMET

Torch Apparel have returned with the new and improved Torch T2 Bike Helmet. The guys first made headlines back in 2012 with their T1 version, and now they are back with a new upgraded version. T2 features a new and improved polycarbonate shell, a more flexible dial-adjuster, a power indicator, and 3 times the battery life of the T1. Recharging the battery has also been made easy by using an included USB cable. The innovative helmet is an essential safety upgrade for bike commuters, allowing you to be visible in all conditions, from all angles.

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MISFIT SHINE 2 FITNESS MONITOR

Like the original, the Misfit Shine 2 Fitness Monitor tracks your activity. But it also does a whole lot more. It has a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis magnetometer for more precise sleep and movement tracking, a halo of lights that shows your daily progress and the time, a new feature that nudges you when you've been sedentary too long, and the ability to show text and call notifications. Despite all the improvements, the coin-like, water-resistant aluminum body is even thinner than before, making it comfortable whether you're wearing it on your wrist or using it with the included clip.

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Space is Vast and Deadly in a New Poster for Syfy's The Expanse

We were just luxuriating in the fact that space exploration is big at the movies again. And now here’s a reminder that we’re finally getting some more big space action on television as well: We’re less than two months away from Syfy’s The Expanse.

If you’re already a fan of the book series by James S.A. Corey, beginning with Leviathan Wakes, then you already know to be thrilled about this. If you’re not, then you’ve got some reading to do. Either way, I'm stoked to reveal this poster, because it sure does look pretty. And it’s helping us to get stoked for the new show, which launches on Dec. 14 and 15 on Syfy.

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Batman V Superman May End Up Being Hollywood's Most Expensive Movie

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a huge deal for the superhero movie genre. Not only is it the first live action pairing of Batman and Superman, but it’s also helping to kick off the DC Extended Universe, Warner Bros.' own big screen superhero world that will compete against the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Obviously the studio was going to pour a lot of money into the project, but it appears they may have spent more green on it than previously thought.

According to Latino-Review, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s budget has risen to $410 million. Currently, 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tidesis the record holder for most expensive movie, with total production costs adding up to $410.6 million. So it’s quite possible that DC’s next movie could surpass that figure. This news comes two weeks after it was reported that Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War movies might come with a $1 billion price tag. While that number sounds way too high to be real, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s total cost at least seems plausible.

There are a number of factors that could account for this massive budget. For one thing, the movie has a lot of big name actors, like Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Jesse Eisenberg, and no doubt their salaries were quite high. Then there was the extended principal photography, which lasted from May 2014 to December 2014 and saw various location shoots around the United States. Finally, we can’t forget all the visual effects work, from Superman and Wonder Woman’s powers to Batman fighting in his massive armor to whatever mystery powerhouse the heroes have to fight. That part of post-production finished only a few days ago, so clearly there’s going to be a lot of visually stimulating content. Even if the $410 million figure isn’t accurate, it wouldn’t be surprising if Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice still ranks near the top of the list of most expensive movies.

The article also notes that Zack Snyder won’t have as much free reign with the budget for Justice League Part One and Part Two, which are about to begin a 16-month production run. Instead, those movies will be budgeted at a combined $500 million. That amount is certainly nothing to sneeze at for a blockbuster, but it does indicate that Warner Bros. isn’t willing to go extremely high on all their DC big screen productions. All this being said, with all the hype surrounding Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the enormous popularity of the leading characters, it’s likely that the movie will make back its budget, and then some…or should I say, and then A LOT!

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Mythbusters will end after its 14th season next year

Mythbusters is coming to an end. In a pair of interviews with Entertainment Weekly, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman confirmed that they're finally closing up shop after 13 years of experiments and explosions.

"Three or four years ago we started wondering more if we were going to be renewed," Savage told EW, explaining that long-running shows like theirs tend to have "freshness dates." Getting a final season, he says, lets the pair send the show off right. "We’ve been filming the last season this year and we get to send it off. We get to pay homage to this thing that’s changed our lives."

Savage and Hyneman learned earlier this year that they'd be getting one more season, so they've spent the past several months working on new segments. The focus will apparently be on looking back on the show's best experiments. "There’s an emphasis on looking back," said Hyneman, "we could do a PhD dissertation on the things we’re tackling. We’ve tried to go as deeply as possible into the things we’re doing, and gave them the respect and care they deserve."

Mythbusters premiered back in 2003 on the Discovery Channel, and quickly became a pop cultural phenomenon. During the course of the show's run, Savage, Hyneman, and their fellow co-stars got to prove and disprove a number of "myths," including whether or not it's possible to escape a prison with a rope made of toilet paper (it is!), and if it's possible to cool the heat from a spicy pepper with petroleum jelly (it isn't!). The show will be missed.

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Be sure to let us know how broke you become

Will do. I have a budget in mind so won't be going broke

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The Experimental Jungle Room Where NYC's Underground Park Is Taking Root

When you walk into the Lowline Lab, the first thing you taste is oxygen. The Lab is hidden in an old warehouse, two blocks away from where the Lowline, a proposed underground park, is slated to open in 2020. The Lab is its prototype — part testing ground and part public sneak peek at the paradise that may one day grow under Manhattan’s streets.

Stepping through the Lab’s inconspicuous door and finding a rainforest is simply surreal. I stopped by for a visit just a few hours before the space opened to the public last weekend, and was immediately blown away by how much freaking foliage the landscape architects stuffed into a whimsical package. At first, I felt like I’d walked into a Dr. Seuss cartoon, with oddly-shaped trees towering over colourful, hard-to-identify flowers.

The daylighting rig is essential a super mirror that beams the sunlight down into the lab.

It turns out this unexpected diversity of plants is a central idea in the project. Lowline creators James Ramsey and Dan Barasch aim to create a unique eco-system underground using cutting-edge daylighting technology to grow dozens, if not hundreds, of plant species normally found in disparate habitats all over the world. Now that the project has developed the infrastructure to pipe in sunlight, they need a testing ground to see which plants thrive in the new environment.

“We’re sort of challenging ourselves with plants that are harder to grow like strawberries and pineapple,” Barasch told me on my tour of the unexpectedly lush space in the Lower East Side as, he pointed out a pair of cute little softball-sized pineapples.

One of said pineapples during the planting phase

There are currently over 3000 plants growing in the Lowline Lab, all fed by a custom daylighting rig that transmits rays above the building down a tube and onto reflective surfaces. The sunlight is then dispersed across the 464-square metre space. (The final Lowline will be 10 times this size, at 4645-square metres.) The plants themselves live in a cleverly terraced structure that both holds the soil in natural-seeming mounds and distributes water to all the plants.

The structure that supports the unique urban ecosystem is beautiful in and of itself. You can only catch a few glimpses of the wooden layers peeping through the foliage, but it’s part of a complex geography that undulates along with the reflective panels that bounce sunlight down from above.

The Lowline Lab during construction with the reflective tiles above and the habitat below

As I walked around the Lowline Lab chatting with Barasch, I couldn’t get over how fresh the air felt and tasted. The plants had just been misted before I arrived, so they glistened under the reflected sunlight. There were flowers from all parts of the world, more types of moss than I could count, and something called “Variegated Snake Plant” which is apparently part of the asparagus family.

“This is very much a real life science experiment,” Barasch told me. “So far we’ve seen really incredible results.”

You normally don’t see this lush scenery in the Lower East Side

The more I explored, the more I imagined how this type of innovation would apply to different indoor spaces. Barasch says the daylighting setup will work in any dark, abandoned space. Can you imagine if underground train stations were lined with lush jungle?

When the late afternoon sun dipped behind the Rivington Hotel, the room darkened before a set of auxiliary lights powered on to keep the space bright. It was time for me to go, I realised, as a local TV crew set up to interview Barasch for the nightly news. This experiment was really just getting off the ground, and I’m eager to go back to check the progress.

It’s like an urban fairy tale…

I took a few last gulps of fresh air and stepped out into the autumn air. It felt like stepping out of the forest and into the crowded, cough-inducing city street where respite’s hard to find. Indeed, that’s exactly what the Lowline is meant to be: a place for New Yorkers to escape in any season. I honestly can’t wait five more years for such a park.

The Lowline Lab will be open to the public for the next months. On Saturdays and Sundays, passersby can stop in and explore the habitat; during the week, there will be educational sessions and events in the delightfully naturally oxygenated warehouse space.

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All The News You Missed Overnight: Thor 3, Prometheus 2 To Shoot In Australia, PS4 Gets Cheaper And More

Technology is filled with all kinds of rumours and speculation — real and fabricated. All The News You Missed Overnight collects all those whispers into one place to deliver your morning buzz.

Australia’s film industry is about to get a blockbuster bump. The Federal Government announced late yesterday that the new Thor and Alien/Prometheus sequels would be shot in Australia. The deal sees Sir Ridley Scott and filmmakers from Disney/Marvel venture down to our fabulous little island to shoot their new films, following tax breaks from the Government to the reported tune of $50 million. Thor: Ragnarok is the name of the new Marvel movie, and the Prometheus sequel is as yet unnamed.

It’s expected the two films will create 3000 new jobs in Australia, adding around $300 million to the national economy, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Both will start shooting in 2016.

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How Everyday Moroccans Used An Online Platform To Help Change Their Constitution

In late 2010, a stunning series of events across the globe showed how fed up millions are with political corruption, inequality, and social injustice. Technology played a key role in rallying support during the Arab Spring, and in Morocco, an open online platform that allowed citizens to help revamp their country’s constitution four years ago led to a website that still works to empower normal citizens in the legislative process.

It’s called Legislation Lab, and it’s a beta project under the umbrella of GovRight, an organisation that presents law documents to the public in an easy-to-understand, easy-to-access way. Legislation Lab then allows citizens to voice feedback on proposals that might become laws. Do people like a proposal? Dislike it? What would they change? All voices and opinions are welcome. The Lab works with law facilitators to present the legal documents and to promote discussion with users. Ideally, the public feedback is presented to government officials and will lead to real change. They want to close the gap in the legislative process between the big cheeses and the regular folks. That’s what happened in Morocco in 2011.

The genesis of Legislation Lab began back four years ago, when Morocco’s King Mohammed VI announced that constitutional reform was coming. That’s when former Microsoft engineer Tarik Nesh-Nash co-founded Reforme.ma. It was an open, participatory platform that aggregated opinions from everyday Moroccans with the goal of changing the country’s constitution to be more democratic. Within two months, more than 10,000 citizen proposals were gathered, and Nesh-Nash presented it all to the constitutional drafting committee. Nesh-Nash says the new draft of the constitution included 40% of the suggestions aggregated on Reforme.ma. In July of the same year, 98.45% of the public voted in approval for the new constitution in a referendum. The changes stripped a lot of power from King Mohammed VI and gave it to the publicly elected representatives instead.

Legislation Lab, which grew out of the success of Reforme.ma, was chosen by the United Nations as one of 14 innovators around the world to help address the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Legislation Lab outlined their plans alongside the other winning startups and companies last month at UN Headquarters in New York.

“Citizens should be able to express their opinions before political leaders make important decisions,” Tarik told the World Bank in an interview. “One of the main objectives of Reforme.ma was to inform youths, to encourage them to read and comment on the constitution that would soon govern their country.”

Next, Legislation Lab has planned projects for New York City, Chile, and Iraq, with the goal of empowering citizens to be more informed about their legal rights, and how they can have a real effect on incoming legislation. This is a great example of how technology helps to do that.

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Your Sunscreen Is Killing Earth's Coral Reefs

If you’re one of the millions of beachgoers who slathers yourself in sunscreen before hitting the surf, here’s an additional reason to feel personally responsible for the sixth mass extinction. Your sunscreen, my sunscreen, all of our goddamn sunscreen is contributing to the death of Earth’s coral reefs. Did I mention we suck?

Climate change may be Public Enemy #1 when it comes to reef-building corals, but for years, scientists have warned that oxybenzone, an ultraviolet-absorbing compound found in practically every major brand of sunscreen, might also be doing damage.

Now, a study published in Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology has confirmed our suspicions. Oxybenzone kills coral. It disrupts their growth, increases the rate of coral bleaching, damages DNA, and can even cause the larval form of coral (called planula) to become trapped in their own skeleton.

According to the new study, a minuscule amount of sunscreen — the equivalent of a single drop in six Olympic sized swimming pools — contains enough oxybenzone to begin disrupting coral growth.

Across the world, 14,000 tonnes of sunscreen lotions are discharged into coral reefs each year. And it isn’t just beachgoers who are at fault. No matter where you live, your skincare products wash off in the shower and wind up in a local waterway. Eventually, some of that water reaches the ocean.

Airport Reef in American Samoa photographed in August 2015 (after the bleaching event). Approximately 70% of the corals here are dead.

Coral reefs harbour a quarter of the ocean’s biodiversity, spawn many of the fish we eat, and protect thousands of miles of coastline from storm surge. Two weeks ago, a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that we’re in the midst of a massive coral bleaching event, a phenomenon which occurs when high temperatures disrupt the symbiotic relationship between coral and its photosynthetic food source, a green alga called zooxanthellae.

This year’s coral bleaching could impact a full 38% of coral reefs worldwide. If current trends continue of ocean warming and acidification continue, some marine scientists think reefs could disappear entirely within the next several decades. The fact that humans are making this human-caused problem even worse by tanning is just sad.

“The use of oxybenzone-containing products needs to be seriously deliberated in islands and areas where coral reef conservation is a critical issue,” study co-author Craig Downs told The Washington Post. “We have lost at least 80 per cent of the coral reefs in the Caribbean. Any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers.”

Thankfully, there’s a pretty straightforward solution here: stop wearing sunscreen that contains this nasty ****. Check the ingredients list on your sunscreen bottle. If you wear L’Oreal Paris, Banana Boat, or another major brand name, you’ll probably find oxybenzone. Chuck that bottle in the garbage and replace it with one of these oxybenzone-free brands. If you don’t like any of those, these ones are ecologically responsible as well, though you may have to do a bit of hunting to get them in Australia.

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What Humans And Life Will Be Like In 1000 Years

ASAP Science attempts to explain what life and humans would be like 1000 years in the future. Nanobots would help us limit human weaknesses, buildings would be able to disassemble and reassemble like Transformers, the number of languages would decrease, our skin would get darker, we’d be able to artificially select desirable traits, and so much more. The future is going to be crazy.

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Stanford Engineers Built A Driverless DeLorean That Drifts Better Than You

A team of engineers from Stanford University decided to create a self-driving DeLorean. But unlike the autonomous cars that are designed to sedately drive in city traffic, this one’s made to drift and pull doughnuts.

The car — known as the Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control, or MARTY — is an experiment in how autonomous vehicles behave at the ragged edge. “We think automated vehicles should be able to execute any manoeuvre within the physical limits of the vehicle to get out of harm’s way,” explained Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, to Wired.

Achieving that goal may have been easier with a more modern vehicle, though: the team in Stanford’s Revs Lab have had to modify the car heavily just to get it driving well. In its initial state, it understeered at every turn. Since, they have added a new power steering system, coil springs, roll cage, and independent electric motors at every wheel.

Because this is an experiment in handling rather than situational awareness, the car isn’t loaded with the kinds of sensors that most autonomous cars feature, like LIDAR or 3D cameras. Instead, it just contains a lot of inertial sensors to detect movement and a simple GPS system to keep track of its position.

The results, as you can see in the video, are impressive: it pulls neat, circular doughnuts and drifts across the tarmac quite elegantly.

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Inside Scotland's Real-Life Fallout Vault

With Fallout 4 due out in November, gamers are once again set to descend upon the nuclear wasteland. Although this time we also get to (briefly) experience life before the apocalypse as well as 200 years afterwards, when the main character emerges from the safety of a Vault into a world changed beyond recognition.

This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK.

At about the same time that the game was announced back in the summer, I found out about ‘Scotland’s Secret Bunker‘, a real-life Fallout Vault about an hour-and-a-half away from my home in Edinburgh, just near St Andrews. This top-secret nuclear bunker was built in the early 1950s and only decommissioned and made public in 1993.

It got me thinking – what would life really be like in a Fallout Vault? Putting the crazed Vault-Tec experiments to one side, would it be possible for humans to live underground for an extended period of time? How big are the real-life Vaults? Would society be able to carry on inside them, just like in (some) of the video game Vaults? Would a real-life Vault even be able to survive a nuclear blast? I set off in my crumbly old Mondeo in search of some answers.

The Scottish bunker – or Troywood, to give its real name – is situated deep in the countryside, a safe distance from the major cities and military bases that would have been the major targets of a nuclear attack. When it was built in 1951, the 250 contractors who worked on the construction were forced to sign the Official Secrets Act and were never told what they were working on, although since at least 1993 the existence of the bunker has been common knowledge – as indicated by the paradoxical three-metre-high sign on the motorway directing travellers towards “Scotland’s Secret Bunker.” Presumably the sign wasn’t there during the Cold War.

As I neared my destination, a lone, almost perfectly conical hill loomed in the distance, looking for all the world like the ‘Vault of the Future’ in the Vault-Tec brochures. I imagined a hollowed-out mountain, complete with circular rolling door and nuclear generator in the basement.

Sadly, this isn’t the real-life Vault.

Instead, the signs took me past the conical hill and towards an inconspicuous farmhouse behind a screen of trees. The Soviet missile trailer parked outside was sure sign that I was at the right place, but back in the day there would have been very little to indicate to passing Russian planes that this was in fact a top-secret nuclear bunker.

The farmhouse that acts as a disguised entrance. You can just about see the missile truck on the right.

Inside, a narrow doorway leads to steep steps down, followed by a 140-metre tunnel that gently slopes downwards and ends in enormous red blast doors weighing 3 tonnes. Beyond these is the bunker itself, spread across two floors that are each the size of a football pitch. In other words, it’s pretty huge.

Having said that, it’s far from the size of the enormous Vaults in the Fallout games, which cover several floors with labyrinthine corridors and every amenity imaginable. By contrast, living conditions are seriously cramped in the real-life bunker, and there’s little room for mod-cons. There’s just one dormitory with a few rows of bunk beds – far too few for the 300 people that would be expected to evacuate here in the event of a nuclear war. To accommodate everyone, a ‘hot bed’ system would have been used, with multiple people sharing beds and sleeping in six-hour shifts.

The dormitory would have become pretty smelly pretty quickly, one imagines.

But if you were one of those lucky 300, you would have been seriously grateful for even having the chance to share a tiny bunk bed. Unlike in the Fallout games, where civilians buy their spots in the Vaults, the Troywood bunker was very much a secret military affair – only specified members of the Civil Defence Corps and government officials would have been allowed in, provided they could get there in time. In the event of a nuclear war, civilians attempting to gain unauthorised entry would more than likely have been summarily shot.

That’s if there was anyone left outside, of course. It’s likely that upwards of 17 million people would have died in the aftermath of an all-out nuclear attack, and millions more would have perished from radiation poisoning and starvation in the months that followed. The government made a series of public information films during the 1970s called ‘Protect and Survive’ with the ostensible aim of providing citizens with practical means on how to live through a nuclear war. Famously, one of the pieces of advice was to take doors off their hinges and prop them at an angle against the wall to create an ‘inner refuge’ safe from nuclear blasts and fallout (skip to 11.50 in the video below).

It’s widely agreed that most of the advice given in the films would do nothing to actually help people survive. The aim was more to give them something practical to do to stop them panicking and fleeing the cities, causing even more chaos.

The Troywood bunker was to be the last bastion of law and order in Scotland in the event that all major cities were destroyed. It was designed to act as a regional HQ, from where a government minister could issue orders to the surrounding area and generally try to keep the region running. Various government departments – such the Ministry of Health and the Treasury – were represented in the command room, despite amounting to little more than one person sat behind a desk. Even the Department of Social Security was represented – presumably the government still planned on issuing pensions and unemployment benefit in the event of a nuclear attack.

The Department for Health and the DSS, in straitened circumstances.

The centre of the command room features a see-through visual display of Scotland on which bomb blasts and the spread of fallout could be plotted based on information coming from the outside. Chillingly, the display still carries the map of destruction from a war-game exercise that was carried out just before the bunker was decommissioned. Behind the map is the all important red phone; the Minister of State in charge of the bunker was authorised to use this phone to give the go ahead for retaliatory nuclear strikes

The main aim of the Troywood bunker was to keep some sort of government going even as society was falling apart. There was a network of similar bunkers scattered all across the UK (some are still viewable to the public, like Kelvedon Hatch in Essex), and they formed 11 regional seats of government that could operate autonomously if Westminster was destroyed and communications across the country were severed. The eventual aim would be for the regional governments to connect up and establish a new nationwide government.

The control room map – note the red telephones behind.

Communication was the key role of the Troywood bunker. Nearly 3000 phone lines radiate out from its switchboard so that information could be gathered quickly and disseminated widely. Mechanical switchboards and telephones were used right up until the 1990s – long after they’d been superseded by digital technology – for the simple reason that they would be relatively unaffected by an EMP blast from a nuclear bomb. But just to be sure, and to protect the various electronic equipment on the site, the entire bunker is encased in an enormous Faraday cage.

The old-fashioned switchboard.

There’s also a BBC radio studio on site that would issue bomb warnings and practical information, as well as providing ‘light entertainment’ in the form of music. In the event of nuclear war, this tiny room would have been the last remaining radio station in the UK. Whether there would have been any radios to broadcast to is debatable – most would have been rendered inoperable by EMP blasts.

The BBC studio in Troywood.

But would the 300 people inside this bunker have survived? Like the Lone Wanderer of Fallout 3, would they have been able to shuffle blinkingly into the light once the fallout had dissipated?

Well, they certainly wouldn’t have survived a direct hit from a nuclear missile, even though the entire facility is encased in 3-metre-thick concrete with an extra layer of earth on top. But it’s estimated that the bunker could have withstood a bomb blast from three miles away with perhaps a few big cracks here and there.

The three-tonne blast doors.

The blast is only the beginning though. The main point of the bunker is that it can be hermetically sealed from the outside world, so that radioactive dust cannot sicken the workers inside. The bunker is equipped with a seriously heavy duty air filtration system that could theoretically filter out radioactive particles and keep the residents safe. Should the main generator have broken down, a back up system could have kicked in and kept going for around three months.

But life inside would have been unremittingly hellish. Medicines would have been in short supply, so some speculate that anyone critically injured may well have been finished off with a pistol to save resources. Bodies would have been packed into cardboard coffins and stacked up until the fallout had lessened, at which point they would have been pushed outside. A heavily stocked armoury was kept to defend against looters.

The Minister of State’s desk – they would have controlled Scotland from here.

In the Fallout world, the hero emerges to a new society comprised of supermutants, bizarre cults and wondrously mutated animals. In real life, the denizens of Scotland’s Secret Bunker would most likely have emerged to find total destruction and, despite their best efforts, civil anarchy like that represented in the suppressed 1965 film The War Game. In a worst-case scenario, they might emerge into a nuclear winter in which UK society has been reduced to medieval levels, as shown in the chilling Threads.

It’s thought that alongside the guns and secret documents that were safely stored in the Troywood armoury, there was also a large supply of cyanide pills. A nuclear attack could easily have destroyed the two entrances to the bunker, in which case the residents would have been trapped behind three metres of concrete – and faced with the choice of slowly starving to death or ending it quickly. Equally, with the world razed to the ground above, society in ruins and everyone you know dead or dying, some may have felt that there was nothing worth emerging for.

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NASA Predicts But Won’t Assure Halloween Asteroid Will Miss

Remember last month when NASA issued press releases and put spokespersons in front of the media to “assure” us that no asteroids would hit the Earth between September 15th and September 28, 2015? Well, a huge asteroid is heading this way with an estimated day of arrival on Halloween (October 31st) and NASA is only “predicting” it will not hit Earth. Is this a poor choice of words or is NASA hiding something?

According to NASA’s report, asteroid 2015 TB145 was just discovered on October 10th, 2015. It’s predicted to approach the Earth within 1.3 Lunar distances or about 490,000 km (305,000 miles) on October 31st, 2015, at about 17:00 UT (7 am EDT). The diameter is between 950 and 2,130 feet (290 to 650 meters). That doesn’t sound too big, does it?

2015 TB145 is 650 meters in diameter – you look it up!

Then it gets worse. The asteroid is nicknamed Spooky (because of its Halloween arrival or something else?) and its orbit is described as “an extremely eccentric and a high inclination orbit.” The encounter velocity is expected to be 78,290 miles per hour, which is considered to be unusually high. Its Tisserand parameter – a way of determining size – is 2.937 which puts it close to comet size. Spooky!

Then there’s this. When asteroid 2015 TB145 was discovered on October 10th, NASA gave it a 9 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale. Here’s what that means:

A collision is certain, capable of causing unprecedented regional devastation for a land impact or the threat of a major tsunami for an ocean impact. Such events occur on average between once per 10,000 years and once per 100,000 years.

SPOOKY! On October 22nd, this was reduced to Code 8. Before you breathe that sigh of relief, here’s what an 8 means:

A collision is certain, capable of causing localized destruction for an impact over land or possibly a tsunami if close offshore. Such events occur on average between once per 50 years and once per several 1000 years.

Still spooky! An asteroid of this size would do major damage on impact. Is NASA telling employees to head for their disaster shelters?

The flyby presents a truly outstanding scientific opportunity to study the physical properties of this object.

So it sounds like NASA likes the odds on its “prediction” of a near miss.Where will you be on Halloween? Trick-or-treating? Peering into your telescope? Shaking under a table in your basement table mumbling “Curse you, Spooky!”?

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Soccer Star Bastian Schweinsteiger May Sue Over Nazi Doll With His Name and Face

Lawyers for the Manchester United player Bastian Schewinsteiger are considering a lawsuit over the serenely smiling Nazi doll.

You can see why Manchester United midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger might be a little peeved at the Nazi dolls being made by Chinese company DID, bearing both his name and a spooky facial likeness.

Schweinsteiger, 31, has “handed over the matter to his lawyers,” a Manchester United spokeswoman told The Daily Beast. Schweinsteiger’s agent, Robert Schneider, did not return a request for comment.

The dolls, according to one German legal expert, constitute not just a violation of Schweinsteiger’s ‘personality rights,’ but also a defamation of his character and insult.

Schweinsteiger signed to Manchester United in a reported $22 million, three-year deal in July.

On its website, DID says it is a manufacturer of “12 inch (1:6 scale) collectable action figurines.” The company was established in 2003, is based in Hong Kong, and has factories in South China.

Its website lists a number of World War Two-related dolls—inspired by German, American, and British soldiers—as well as “modern military” figures, like “Weimy,” who is supposed to be a member of the U.S. Navy’s ‘Special Boat Team’, and animals.

There are figures inspired by the Blues and Royals and Life Guard regiments of the British Army, and Doberman Pinschers.

There is also a 12” Napoleonic Action Figure series, 12” Japanese Samurai Action Figure series, 12” Fashion Figure series, 12” Movie Figure series, 12” X-Games / Sports Figure series and 1: 6 scale accessories series (including a 1:6 Scale Army Vehicle), 1:6 Scale Weapon Accessories, 1:6 Scale Leather Shoes and Uniform Accessories, even a ‘1:6 Ultimate Realistic’ series, which includes horses.

“The detailed and realistic figures are universally recognized as setting the new benchmark in high-quality collectable figures,” DID boasts.

There are over 60 pictures featuring the ‘Bastian’ dolls, which sell for around $120 each.

The handsome Teutonic soldier is variously pictured in outdoor clothing, and a more formal uniform, lugging around his water flagon, his food provisions (including amazing vegetable detail), and rucksack, with accessories like a sheathed knife hanging from it.

Patrick Chan, a DiD representative in Hong kong, told Bild: “We offer no figures based on the football. The resemblance is purely coincidental. The figure is based on a typical German. We believe most Germans look like this. Bastian is a common name in Germany.”

However, Bastian the doll does look remarkably like Bastian the footballer.

There are numerous pictures of the doll’s smiling face in profile, straight-on, or at a slight angle. He has bucked teeth. He seems to be a happy fighter, and has a sporty white anorak, to partner with his more staid parade-ground uniform.

Needless to say, all this murderous dashing about under Hitler’s instruction means Bastian has an amazing waist (obvious because of his belted jackets), even if one of his favorite accessories are two loaves of bread.

Bastian the doll holds these carbs close, and you can even purchase them separately. Bastian has both gloves and mittens, helmets and balaclavas—the latter he teams together.

DID’s other dolls include a similarly well-dressed Stalin, who has both long overcoat, and shorter, fitted jacket and trousers. He has his hand help up in salute, as well as with pipe. In every picture, his moustache is luxuriant.

Stalin appears alongside Winston Churchill, both men pictured giving each other serious side-eye, as well as shaking hands.

A totally separate category features that great patriotic symbol, the British bulldog.

On its website, DiD, which stands for Dragon In Dream, says enthusiastically of its war-celebrating “mission”: ‘Leading the way!’ is our slogan as DID is always leading the collectible action figure industry.

“We will keep trying our great best to produce unique and dynamite figures for the hobby world, and of course, we will offer our fans a reasonable price in getting those collector-oriented figures as always. So, Expand your army! Expand your collection! DID promise to bring the best products for your buck!”

DID says it works with “other famous international toy companies, like Hasbro in UK and Bandai in Japan. The high quality products that DID produced have won highly appreciation from many magazines continuously. And some of our collectable products are even being displayed in museums.”

[MIKA27]

SATECHI WIRELESS GAMEPAD FOR SMARTPHONE

Nobody likes to be play video games on their smartphones. The screens are just simply too small, and it feels like a watered down experience. Satechi looks change that, bringing the feel of your favorite console to your smartphone with their Xbox inspired Wireless Gamepad.

We’ve covered a few controllers similar to this in the past, but they were built specifically for iPhones or Androids – Satechi works for both, which really sets them apart from the competition. The device is easy to use, featuring an extendable arm that cradles your smartphone on the top portion of the controller. It uses Bluetooth technology, meaning it;s completely wireless, and will work with any Bluetooth-enabled device. It sells for $39, which means it will probably be a hot commodity for on the go gamers this holiday season. [Purchase]

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THE BENJAMIN MESSENGER

Brothers Leather Supply Company, craft quality leather goods at exceptional prices from their studio in the heart of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In their newest line, iconic meets vintage, the Tribute Series, features some beautiful products such as the Benjamin Messenger, made with natural Vechetta tanned leather, this bag will last you for the rest of your life. The two front pockets with buckles-snaps add to the vintage appeal, and inside you´ll find two dividers for storing a 15” laptop and other stuff.

[MIKA27]

JONES STORM CHASER SNOWBOARD

Snowboard and surfboard technology collide with this sleek, fast Jones Storm Chaser Snowboard. Designed by surfboard shaper Chris Christenson along with Jeremy Jones, this powder board offers superior float no matter how deep the powder around you happens to be. It achieves this thanks to the directional shape and rocker design that helps kick up the nose when you're in the snow, allowing you to easily float on top of the soft stuff. It's quick, durable, and ready to handle just about anything as you race down the slopes this winter.

[MIKA27]

EMPERADOR CIGAR CHEST

You could call it a humidor, but that seems far too pedestrian. The Emperador Cigar Chest incorporates over 2,600 individual components to deliver the most luxurious smoke box we've ever seen. On top is a tourbillion timepiece made from over 300 pieces by a Swiss watchmaker, and surrounded by 24 individual glass tubes, each of which comes pre-packed with a Grand Cru cigar wrapped in four gold leaves. This compartment is secured by a passcode, while the included cigar cutter, table lighter, and ashtray sit securely in a front drawer. Of course, it pays equal attention to the care of your cigars, incorporating a world's first self-regulating humidity system that needs neither water nor human intervention to keep a constant humidity level of 70% and an internal temperature between 61º and 65º F.

[MIKA27]

MINIBREW

Brewing your own beer at home isn't overly difficult, but it can be intimidating if you haven't done it before. The MiniBrew is an at-home machine that makes brewing beer nearly as simple as brewing coffee. This all-in-one machine brews and cools the wort, then automatically transfers it to the yeast unit to ferment. It automatically controls the fermentation process, so it's easy to reproduce your favorite batches, and the app will also let you discover new beers and order ingredients, so it's equally as easy to try new recipes, five homebrewed liters at a time.

[MIKA27]

Absinthe Used to Be Malaria Medicine: The Secret Medical History of Cocktails

“We don’t create cocktails now to cure venereal diseases or to relieve gout, but there’s that history there,” says Matthew Rowley, author of Lost Recipes of Prohibition: Notes from a Bootlegger’s Manual. Créme de menthe settled rebellious stomachs, the Corpse Reviver brought heavy drinkers back from wicked hangovers, and absinthe fended off malaria. Whether we know it or not, many of our favorite fancy cocktails and spirits have their roots in alchemy and medicine. We just forgot all about it.

Absinthe formulas from 100+ years ago.

Take Your Medicine

According to Rowley, the lineage of modern cocktails may actually date at least as far back as 77 A.D., when a physician under the Roman Emperor Nero penned a treatise on preparing compounded medicines that included wines, bitters, and various alcohols.

Over the years, that tradition held strong. “Ginger syrup and ginger brandy were apothecary things; a Rock and Rye had horehound, an herb used to soothe a sore throat,” Rowley says. Absinthe, for example, we drink now for its taste, mystique, and aesthetics. But, originally, it was an anti-malarial prescribed for French and Swiss troops in the 1800s.

Those traditions influenced Jerry Thomas, an American bartender from the 19th century whom today’s big-name mixologists revere as the father of modern bartending. ”Not to take away any glory, but he didn’t write that first Bartender’s Guide in a vacuum.” Rowley says. ”The recipes spring from pharmacopeia, or druggists’ handbooks.” In other words, what we know now as cocktails started out as medicine.

The compound formula for Ginger Brandy from Lyon’s notebook

From Ancient Rome to 20th-Century New York

In the early 1900s, those medicinal traditions informed the bootlegger physician whose diary found its way into Rowley’s care and inspired his book. Though he went to pains to hide his German roots, diarist Victor Alfred Lyon gives himself away with his obvious fondness for a German-Russian-Jewish liqueur called kümmel. An unsweetened brandy flavored with caraway seeds, kümmel was as ubiquitous as Chartreuse and Benedictine at the time, and thought to be carminative. “It was served at the end of a meal because it relieves bloating and gas, “Rowley says. “If you’ve eaten a big meal, and you’re gassy and farty, have some caraway-heavy kümmel.”

But once World War I came, Rowley explains, “the umlaut in its name was just a middle finger to America.” So, by the 1960s, the only people who drank it had died off—as had the taste for it.

Liquor-based remedies may have been casualties of the rise of modern medicine, but cocktails found new life as something admired for their flavor, that could make its drinkers feel good without a health-related endgame in sight. As far as Rowley’s concerned, thinking of spirits in terms of taste is a modern luxury: “We don’t have to focus on alcohol as medicine anymore; we can focus on the taste of it, even if that means drinking Fireball. We don’t drink it for the anti-choleric effects of cinnamon.”

Cinnamon, peppermint, cinnamon, and anise cordial recipes from Lyon’s notebook

Bringing It Back

We can still see some evidence of medicinal booze, but only when we know where to look. Rowley found a Kümmel Fizz served at Expatriate in Portland, Oregon: old-school kümmel mixed with blackberry liqueur and fresh lime juice. But he’d like to see today’s bartenders go even further, resurrecting techniques such as the ice kümmel—an old method of serving caraway-flavored kümmel by frosting the inside of a clear bottle with supersaturated sugar crystals. Sure, it’s not being used to treat gastrointestinal distress, but it’s keeping a legacy alive and expanding the canon.

“Let’s look at what pharmacists were doing, or at what was happening in German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish,” he notes, with hopes of broadening the scope of alcohol’s history to include medicine and beyond. “I think we can scour these things and other disciplines that seem ‘new’ to us, and bring back what’s long been forgotten.”

Lost Recipes from Prohibition: Notes from a Bootlegger’s Manual by Matthew Rowley comes out on October 28, 2015.

[MIKA27]

Michael J. Fox Tries On His Self-Lacing Nike Mags for Jimmy Kimmel

As a species, we may have overdone it with yesterday’s rapture-like celebration. But no one can deny that the best moment of October 21, 2015 was when Nike delivered the first pair of self-lacing Mags (AS PROMISED) to one Michael J. Fox.

Fox posted a video of the shoes as well as a handwritten note from Nike’s Tinker Hatfield, who designed the concept shoes for the original film and the actual versions of the shoes for Nike. Here’s Fox on Jimmy Kimmel last night wearing the shoes and demonstrating their power-lacing abilities.

“Power” laces they’re not—I think I could lace ice skates faster—but as many have pointed out, the shoes are actually great for people who have trouble tying laces, including people who have degenerative disorders like Parkinson’s, which Fox, of course, does.

Also not awful: Marty and Doc on the show talking about hoverboards and selfies with a very special cameo I don’t want to ruin:

One more refreshing detail after yesterday’s brand shenanigans. USA Today released a special Back to the Future edition to remind everyone that they do indeed still publish an actual newspaper but they actually executed the whole thing incredibly well (for one, they waited until October 22, 2015 to put it out to make it cinematically accurate).

But the best part was that among the #brandedcontent, the back page featured an ad for Fox’s foundation, which is also getting all the money from the Nikes:

Just reading the first line in the ad—“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything”—immediately overwhelmed any Back to the Future fatigue I might have incurred yesterday. Our moment of caring about the movies might be over, but that Fox will be a leading man forever.

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Material Made From Industrial Waste And Orange Peel Sucks Mercury Out Of Water

Mercury in water can damage food and water supplies and in the worst cases even kill. Now, a team of Australian researchers has stumbled across a material made from industrial waste and orange peel that can suck the metal right out of H20.

Synthetic chemists from South Australia’s Flinders University have created a polymer that can be synthesised entirely from industrial by-products. Called sulphur-limonene polysulfide, it’s made up of… just sulphur and limonene, actually. Justin Chalker, one of the researchers, explains to The New Daily:

“We take sulphur, which is a by-product of the petroleum industry, and we take limonene, which is the main component of orange oil, so is produced in large quantities by the citrus industry, and we’re able to react them together to form a type of soft red rubber.”

That soft red rubber happily absorbs mercury, making it easy to clean up contaminated water. The good news is that both sulphur and limonene are in relatively high supply — 70 million tonnes of sulphur and 70,000 tonnes of limonene are produced as industrial by-products every year — and low demand. The results are published in the German journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Now, the team is working out how to create the material at a commercial scale.

[MIKA27]

These Star-Crossed Stellar Lovers Are Heading For A Disaster Of Cosmic Proportions

Behold VFTS 352, the hottest and most massive “overcontact binary” star system ever discovered. The two stars, which are so close that they’re touching, feature a combined mass 57 times that of our Sun. Astronomers say it’s a unique stellar relationship that will culminate in a rather dramatic finish.

This unusually large contact binary was discovered by an international team of astronomers using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Located 160,000 light-years away, it’s comprised of two twin stars that orbit each other in a little over 24 hours. The stars are so close that their surfaces overlap, creating a stellar bridge between them.

Remarkably, their cores are only 7.4 million miles (12 million kilometers) apart (that’s roughly 20 lunar distances). With a mass 57 times greater than the Sun, and a scorching surface temperature exceeding 40,000 degrees Celsius, it’s the hottest and most massive overcontact binary ever discovered. The details of this extraordinary finding can now be found in the Astrophysical Journal.

This kissing pair is unique in that both stars are roughly equal in terms of size. Other similar systems feature a star that’s significantly larger than the other, resulting in the cannibalization of the smaller object. But these two, with their roughly equal mass, may actually be sharing their cosmic material with each other. Astronomers speculate that the twin stars of VFTS 352 are swapping about 30 per cent of their stellar stuff, a phenomenon known as “internal mixing.”

Location of VFTS 352 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (ESO)

Due to their volatile nature, systems like these don’t last long. Astronomers are actually quite fortunate to have discovered this system, which could meet its end in one of two ways. The ESO explains:

The first potential outcome is the merging of the two stars, which would likely produce a rapidly rotating, and possibly magnetic, gigantic single star. “If it keeps spinning rapidly it might end its life in one of the most energetic explosions in the Universe, known as a long-duration gamma-ray burst,” says the lead scientist of the project, Hugues Sana, of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

The second possibility is explained by the lead theoretical astrophysicist in the team, Selma de Mink of University of Amsterdam: “If the stars are mixed well enough, they both remain compact and the VFTS 352 system may avoid merging. This would lead the objects down a new evolutionary path that is completely different from classic stellar evolution predictions. In the case of VFTS 352, the components would likely end their lives in supernova explosions, forming a close binary system of black holes. Such a remarkable object would be an intense source of gravitational waves.”

Interestingly, systems like VFTS 352, with its tremendous internal heat, perform a critical role in the evolution of galaxies, and are thought to be a major producer of elements like oxygen.

[MIKA27]

Chernobyl and Other Places Where Animals Thrive Without People

A European gray wolf roams an area off limits to people near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Wolf numbers in the area have increased to seven times those of other regional reserves

Some disaster zones end up as accidental nature reserves: places where animals survive because humans aren't allowed in.

KIEV, Ukraine—War, nuclear accidents, and poverty rarely have a silver lining, but in Chernobyl and a handful of other places around the world, catastrophes for human populations have become a boon for wildlife.

In places plagued by guerrilla warfare, nuclear fallout, and chemical weapons, wild animals have rebounded in great numbers on land we have made too polluted—or too dangerous—for human habitation.

Animal and plant life are coming back strong in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone, which has been undisturbed by humans for nearly 30 years said Jim Smith, an environmental scientist and author of a new study of life near Chernobyl released on Monday.

“It’s much like the landscape of the rest of that area of Ukraine and Belarus, but without the people,” he said. “Ten years ago, it was like a town overgrown by the forest. Today it's like a forest that has swallowed some buildings.”

Chernobyl Nuclear Exclusion Zone, Ukraine: Nuclear Disaster

Wolves, elk boar, bear, lynxes, deer, and dozens of other species are thriving inside the area evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster, Smith's new study reports.

The nuclear accident in Ukraine in 1986 was one of the worst in history, forcing the evacuation of 116,000 people from 1,600 square miles of land, but today wildlife populations are soaring in an area that bridges the border between Ukraine and Belarus.

“Nature flourishes when humans are removed from the equation, even after the world’s worst nuclear accident,” said Smith, an earth and environmental sciences professor at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K.

The “accidental” nature reserve created in this almost completely unpopulated "exclusion zone" is now teeming with big herbivores and predators, including the rare European lynx and the European brown bear, not been seen in the region for nearly a century.

Przewalski’s horse and the endangered European bison, introduced to the area, have also prospered. Wolves abound, at population levels seven times higher than in comparable reserves uncontaminated by nuclear fallout.

“We’re not saying the radiation levels are good for the animals; we know it damages their DNA, but human habitation and development of the land are worse for wildlife,” he said.

The Amur leopard (one shown at the Minnesota Zoological Gardens) is a critically endangered species that is believed to live in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

Korean Demilitarized Zone: Military Lines

The most heavily armed border in the world is called the demilitarized zone and runs 155 miles between North and South Korea. The 2.5-mile strip of land is dotted with landmines and is hemmed in by bunkers, trenches, walls, gates, barbed wire, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers—and is home to a surprising array of endangered species.

The involuntary park, which covers an area a little bigger than New York City ranges from swamps, mountains and prairies to tidal marshes, lakes and coastline, is now home to the rare red-crowned crane and the white-naped crane as well as the Asiatic black bear. The narrow buffer zone may also harbor the extremely rare Amur leopard and the Siberian tiger.

Ongoing tensions between North and South Korea mean the thin strip of land will probably remain a safe haven for wildlife for some time.

Darién Gap, Colombia and Panama: Guerilla Territory

Spanning tens of thousands of miles, the Pan-American Highway connects Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina—except that it doesn’t. For about 50 miles on the border between Panama and Colombia, the road disappears into a stretch of some of the most inhospitable rainforests, swamps, and mountains in the world.

The lack of a road means weak central authority, making this a haven for guerillas fighting the Colombian government, as well as for drug traffickers and migrants in the 2,220 square miles of Panama’s Darién National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The park shelters endangered and threatened species such as the brown-headed spider monkey, great green macaw, jaguar, and harpy eagle.

“It helps that the road has not been completed,” said Dr. Ricardo Correa, conservation programs advisor at Panama Wildlife Conservation. “The guerillas and the poverty are impediments to development, but this helps protect the biodiversity of the region,” he said.

This black-footed ferret was part of the release of 30 of her kind by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Wildlife Refuge, a former toxic waste site now home to wildlife.

Iron Curtain, Europe: A Now-Fallen Divide

Unlike Korea’s DMZ, the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain have long come down. Today this border has been transformed from a death strip into a lush ribbon of land that is home to some 1,200 species, crossing 24 countries and running around 7,700 miles from the northern tip of Europe to the Mediterranean.

Dotted with old concrete watchtowers and bunkers, the territory was long ago cleared of landmines, barbed wire, and machine-gun nests. It's now home to many species of rare and endangered birds, mammals, plants, and insects.

“It is a relatively narrow strip, but it is a very valuable strip of land,” says Melanie Kreutz, vice director of the BUND Friends of the Earth Germany and regional coordinator for the Green Belt, Central Europe. “There are species living in there that weren’t living just a few kilometers away.”

Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado: Toxic Past

Black-footed ferrets, American bison, and more than 330 other species wander through the short-grass prairie landscape of this reserve, against a backdrop of high rises in downtown Denver.

Covering 25 square miles, this former World War II chemical weapons production facility is today home to prairie dogs, bald eagles, coyotes, deer, and a range of birds and plant species.

“When they fenced in this place during the war, they also fenced in the deer herds and the coyotes, and their descendants have been here since this place was established,” says Edward Tagliente, a park ranger who has worked for more than a decade at the reserve. Even with all the chemicals, heavy metals and pesticides, the animals remained, he said.

“The biggest cause of the depletion of wildlife populations is habitat loss, whether we’re farming, mining, building cities, or even making chemical weapons,” said Tagliente. “Whatever activity we’re doing, we’re disrupting that habitat.”